Oldcastle left the room, and Judy turned to me. "How do you do, Mr Walton?" she said.
"Quite well, thank you, Judy," I answered. "Your uncle admits you to his workshop, then?"
"Yes, indeed. He would feel rather dull, sometimes, without me. Wouldn't you, Uncle Stoddart?"
"Just as the horses in the field would feel dull without the gad-fly, Judy," said Mr Stoddart, laughing.
Judy, however, did not choose to receive the laugh as a scholium explanatory of the remark, and was gone in a moment, leaving Mr Stoddart and myself alone. I must say he looked a little troubled at the precipitate retreat of the damsel; but he recovered himself with a smile, and said to me,
"I wonder what speech I shall make next to drive you away, Mr Walton."
"I am not so easily got rid of, Mr Stoddart," I answered. "And as for taking offence, I don't like it, and therefore I never take it. But tell me what you are doing now."
"I have been working for some time at an attempt after a perpetual motion, but, I must confess, more from a metaphysical or logical point of view than a mechanical one."
Here he took a drawing from a shelf, explanatory of his plan.
"You see," he said, "here is a top made of platinum, the heaviest of metals, except iridium—which it would be impossible to procure enough of, and which would be difficult to work into the proper shape. It is surrounded you will observe, by an air-tight receiver, communicating by this tube with a powerful air-pump. The plate upon which the point of the top rests and revolves is a diamond; and I ought to have mentioned that the peg of the top is a diamond likewise. This is, of course, for the sake of reducing the friction. By this apparatus communicating with the top, through the receiver, I set the top in motion—after exhausting the air as far as possible. Still there is the difficulty of the friction of the diamond point upon the diamond plate, which must ultimately occasion repose. To obviate this, I have constructed here, underneath, a small steam-engine which shall cause the diamond plate to revolve at precisely the same rate of speed as the top itself. This, of course, will prevent all friction."
"Not that with the unavoidable remnant of air, however," I ventured to suggest.
"That is just my weak point," he answered. "But that will be so very small!"
"Yes; but enough to deprive the top of PERPETUAL motion."
"But suppose I could get over that difficulty, would the contrivance have a right to the name of a perpetual motion? For you observe that the steam-engine below would not be the cause of the motion. That comes from above, here, and is withdrawn, finally withdrawn."
"I understand perfectly," I answered. "At least, I think I do. But I return the question to you: Is a motion which, although not caused, is ENABLED by another motion, worthy of the name of a perpetual motion; seeing the perpetuity of motion has not to do merely with time, but with the indwelling of self-generative power—renewing itself constantly with the process of exhaustion?"
He threw down his file on the bench.
"I fear you are right," he said. "But you will allow it would have made a very pretty machine."
"Pretty, I will allow," I answered, "as distinguished from beautiful. For I can never dissociate beauty from use."
"You say that! with all the poetic things you say in your sermons! For I am a sharp listener, and none the less such that you do not see me. I have a loophole for seeing you. And I flatter myself, therefore, I am the only person in the congregation on a level with you in respect of balancing advantages. I cannot contradict you, and you cannot address me."
"Do you mean, then, that whatever is poetical is useless?" I asked.
"Do you assert that whatever is useful is beautiful?" he retorted.
"A full reply to your question would need a ream of paper and a quarter of quills," I answered; "but I think I may venture so far as to say that whatever subserves a noble end must in itself be beautiful."
"Then a gallows must be beautiful because it subserves the noble end of ridding the world of malefactors?" he returned, promptly.
I had to think for a moment before I could reply.
"I do not see anything noble in the end," I answered.
"If the machine got rid of malefaction, it would, indeed, have a noble end. But if it only compels it to move on, as a constable does—from this world into another—I do not, I say, see anything so noble in that end. The gallows cannot be beautiful."
"Ah, I see. You don't approve of capital punishments."
"I do not say that. An inevitable necessity is something very different from a noble end. To cure the diseased mind is the noblest of ends; to make the sinner forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, the loftiest of designs; but to punish him for being wrong, however necessary it may be for others, cannot, if dissociated from the object of bringing good out of evil, be called in any sense a NOBLE end. I think now, however, it would be but fair in you to give me some answer to my question. Do you think the poetic useless?"
"I think it is very like my machine. It may exercise the faculties without subserving any immediate progress."
"It is so difficult to get out of the region of the poetic, that I cannot think it other than useful: it is so widespread. The useless could hardly be so nearly universal. But I should like to ask you another question: What is the immediate effect of anything poetic upon your mind?"
"Pleasure," he answered.
"And is pleasure good or bad?"
"Sometimes the one, sometimes the other."
"In itself?"
"I should say so."
"I should not."
"Are you not, then, by your very profession, more or less an enemy of pleasure?"
"On the contrary, I believe that pleasure is good, and does good, and urges to good. CARE is the evil thing."
"Strange doctrine for a clergyman."
"Now, do not misunderstand me, Mr Stoddart. That might not hurt you, but it would distress me. Pleasure, obtained by wrong, is poison and horror. But it is not the pleasure that hurts, it is the wrong that is in it that hurts; the pleasure hurts only as it leads to more wrong. I almost think myself, that if you could make everybody happy, half the evil would vanish from the earth."
"But you believe in God?"
"I hope in God I do."
"How can you then think that He would not destroy evil at such a cheap and pleasant rate."
"Because He wants to destroy ALL the evil, not the half of it; and destroy it so that it shall not grow again; which it would be sure to do very soon if it had no antidote but happiness. As soon as men got used to happiness, they would begin to sin again, and so lose it all. But care is distrust. I wonder now if ever there was a man who did his duty, and TOOK NO THOUGHT. I wish I could get the testimony of such a man. Has anybody actually tried the plan?"
But here I saw that I was not taking
